Tone: Pickup Height Adjustment Vs Pickup Replacement
Shime
Aug 20 2009, 08:37 PM
GMC:er
Posts: 92
Joined: 11-August 09
From: Flanders, Belgium
Hi all,

I recently came across this interesting article on pickup height adjustment, which I thought I should share:

http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/pickups/

There have been a lot of threads and discussions on tone modification through pickup replacement (and a truly tremendous amount of knowledge on different pickup types has been gathered at the GMC forum!). But the effect of pickup height adjustment on guitar tone only came up occasionally - I think.

I have only begun experimenting with this myself, but it is really amazing how altering the height of a pickup by only half a turn of a screw can alter your tone. And then there's the polepieces under each string which in many cases are individually adjustable (on most humbuckers). In other words, there's a whole range of tone to be explored between the 10mm (or so) of distance between the pickup and the string...

I wonder what other members' experiences with this are? huh.gif

I think pickup & polepiece height adjustment is definitely something worth considering before replacing a pickup. After all, it's the easiest tone mod you can do, you only need a screwdriver and it costs nothing! Who knows, it may turn out that those crappy stock pickups were not that crappy after all... smile.gif

Cheers!

Shime

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ZakkWylde
Aug 21 2009, 01:07 AM
Learning Tone Master
Posts: 3.185
Joined: 22-June 07
From: Germany
You can't change the general tone of a pickup with adjusting. If it sounds bad it sounds bad- Period.

But the height and pole piece adjustment can change the chracteristics of a pickup quite a lot (it varies from pickup types, some sound the same at all heights other react very sensitive to adjustments).
Lowering a pickup will give you more low end and decrease your treble and putting the pickup closer to the strings will do the opposite. Also you will get a bit more output with the pickup closer to the strings, but there is a limit of how far or close you can lower or heighten the pickup!

If the pickup gets to close to the strings it will pick up noises and it will feedback faster and on the opposite there is a tone quality loss if the pickup is too far away from the strings. Real tone freaks adjust the height of the individual pole pieces to get the best distance on EVERY SINGLE STRING but imho that's overkill^^

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Shime
Aug 21 2009, 09:08 AM
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Posts: 92
Joined: 11-August 09
From: Flanders, Belgium
You're right of course - a bad pickup is a bad pickup (replacing the stock pups on my aria pro II with EMGs was definitely a killer move at the time!). But if you have good ones (or even moderately good ones), it can be gratifying to play with the tone by adjusting heights. It can be time-consuming though. PU adjustments also affect your amp tone settings. And then if you have more than one guitar...

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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 22 2009, 01:22 AM
Instructor
Posts: 25.396
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From: Belgrade, Serbia
QUOTE (ZakkWylde @ Aug 21 2009, 02:07 AM) *
Real tone freaks adjust the height of the individual pole pieces to get the best distance on EVERY SINGLE STRING but imho that's overkill^^


I'm a real tone freak, and I believe that adjusting individual poles is something that is very useful and not overkill at all! smile.gif You can adjust the poles (screws) while the guitar is in tune, no need for detuning the strings, so one day spent with these adjustments and comparing sounds can really create nice customized sound out of a pickup.

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